


A Sweet Surprise

by Lady_Clara



Category: ACCA13区監察課 | ACCA 13-ku Kansatsuka
Genre: Fluff, Food, Future Fic, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27731101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Clara/pseuds/Lady_Clara
Summary: Jean and Nino stop by their favorite bakery on the way home. When they get back to their apartment, Jean finds there’s more than just bread waiting for him in the shopping bag.
Relationships: Nino/Jean Otus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	A Sweet Surprise

“It’s your lucky day!” The amicable shopkeeper motions to a pink and brown swirled loaf of bread amid many other flavored loaves on display. “We have the strawberry chocolate variety in stock. The baker made it fresh this morning.”

“That certainly is lucky,” Nino responds. “What do you say, Jean? Should we get a whole loaf?”

“We should.” It’s a no-brainer. Mugimaki is Jean’s preferred bakery, and strawberry chocolate bread combines his and Nino’s favorite flavors. Win-win situation.

“Excellent decision,” the shopkeeper says. “Anything else? Something for Miss Lotta, perhaps?”

Jean nods. He memorized the list his sister gave him earlier. “Lotta wants four two-centimeter slices each of the cinnamon bread, the banana nut, and the pumpkin.”

“Wonderful,” the shopkeeper replies. “I’ll put those in some bags for you.”

Nino turns to Jean. “I’ll carry the strawberry chocolate loaf and you can take Lotta’s order.”

“Okay.”

There’s something slightly off about Nino today. Despite knowing him for literal decades, Jean can’t pinpoint what it is exactly. He seems…nervous. Ever since he met up with him at the ACCA Headquarters after work, his mouth has been drawn tighter and his eyes have been all over the place. He has alternated between looking down like he’s lost in thought and looking at Jean as if Jean suspects him of something. (He doesn’t. He trusts Nino with his life.)

A moment later, the shopkeeper hands Nino a brown bag with Mugimaki’s minimalistic square logo printed on it. In it is a full loaf of the strawberry chocolate bread wrapped in a plastic covering. “Enjoy it,” he says with pep.

Nino thanks him, and the shopkeeper moves on to preparing the rest of the order.

“Ah, Jean,” the shopkeeper says, waving him over to the far end of the display case. “Let me show you something.” Jean follows to where he is motioning. “I would recommend that you get the banana nut bread in three-centimeter slices as opposed to two.” He uses a ruler to demonstrate. “It’s quite moist, so it would hold up better in thicker slices. See the difference?” He moves the ruler around. “What do you think?”

“Sure.” Jean certainly is not one to question the expertise of anyone who works at Mugimaki.

“Wonderful! I think Miss Lotta will be very happy with this batch.”

Jean glances over at Nino while the shopkeeper busies himself with assembling the other slices. He notices how rigidly Nino is holding his shopping bag and wonders what on earth is going on.

A few minutes later, the shopkeeper hands Jean a bag full of baked goods and thanks the two of them for visiting. They pay and head out into the late afternoon sun.

The walk back to the apartment they’ve shared ever since Jean and Lotta persuaded Nino to sell his place and move in with them several years back is quiet for the most part. Something is clearly on Nino’s mind, but Jean doesn’t want to pry. If there’s something Nino wants to tell him, he’ll give him the space to tell him when he’s ready.

“I’m glad we can do this, Jean,” Nino finally says after a long stretch of silence.

“Do what?”

Nino clutches the shopping bag a little tighter. “Go to Mugimaki. Hang out after work. Drink wine.”

Jean feels a smile spread across his face. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for more than twenty years?”

Nino lets out a small laugh. He looks into the shopping bag he’s carrying, glances over at Jean, and then sets his gaze forward again. “Yeah. I’m glad nothing’s really changed on that end.”

Nothing has changed. At the same time, everything has changed. ACCA has operated differently since the attempted coup ten years ago. Jean and Lotta have learned their true heritage. The king of Dowa has passed on. But the time Jean gets to spend with Nino has remained a constant, and so long as that stays the same, he’ll be content. Nino must know he feels that way. Nino knows Jean’s feelings better than Jean knows his own feelings.

Their closeness is another thing that has changed yet stayed the same. Learning he had royal blood didn’t perturb Jean all that much. Learning he would potentially lose his best friend once all was said and done? _That_ had unsettled him greatly. But even after Nino’s big assignment ended, he stayed, and their routine of going out for drinks after work and hanging out on the weekends continued as normal.

Over time, though, there have been subtle shifts here and there. Nino never pursued a relationship with anyone, and Jean lost interest in going on dates with other people in favor of spending more time with him. Lotta has dropped hints several times that she would be very happy if Nino was her brother-in-law. Their first kiss was when the clock struck midnight one New Year’s Eve. (Nino was convinced Jean’s action was just the champagne talking, so to prove him wrong, Jean kissed him again on New Year’s Day.)

Jean never thought too hard about these shifts. They felt organic – it was Nino, after all. They were still _them_.

When they reach the door to the apartment, Jean can see how shaky Nino’s hand is as he puts the key into the lock.

They set their bags down on the kitchen counter once inside. Despite the shakiness of his hands, Nino’s voice is even when he asks, “Would you mind cutting me a slice of the strawberry chocolate bread?”

“Sure.”

Jean takes the loaf out of the shopping bag, lays it on the counter, and undoes the twist tie to free if from the plastic covering. It’s not until he’s halfway through removing the twist tie that he realizes, in fact, that whatever is between his fingers is not a twist tie at all.

He looks down and sees a gold band cinching the plastic together at the top of the loaf. It shines brightly under the kitchen lights.

Since when has Mugimaki used fancy gold bands in place of regular twist ties?

“Nino, look at this.” Jean turns around and holds the loaf of bread out in front of him. When he looks up, confusion turns to concern as he sees Nino frozen several feet away next to the living room couch, shoulders squared and hands in his pockets, looking equal parts terrified and confident.

Jean tries to wrap his head around all of this odd behavior, but he can’t figure out the cause of it. Nothing out of the ordinary happened today as far as he knows. Their trip to Mugimaki after work was fine, but Nino was acting strange there, too. So what could it be?

Maybe something’s wrong with the bread. Jean looks at the loaf in his hands – it looks nothing but delicious. The swirls of strawberry and chocolate are perfectly blended. Maybe Nino wanted a different flavor?

Then his eyes go back to the glinting piece of gold keeping the bread’s plastic wrapping closed, and his inspector brain finally kicks in as he puts two and two together.

The gold band is definitely not a twist tie.

It’s a ring.

_A ring._

A ring Nino must have attached to it.

“Nothing has to change,” Nino says quickly. “We don’t have to put a label on what we have. I just want you to have that.”

Jean looks from the ring to Nino to the ring to Nino again. Nino is a stoic guy, but Jean has known him long enough to read the fear on his face as he awaits a response. The only problem is that Jean doesn’t know _how_ to respond. A small, shiny object has stolen all the words from him.

“Is this a marriage proposal?” are the words that eventually come tumbling out of his mouth.

Nino recedes further into his black turtleneck sweater. “If you want it to be. But it doesn’t have to. It can be whatever we want it to be.”

Jean swivels the ring around the plastic wrapping. It’s simple, not too thick or obtrusive. It’s exactly the kind of thing he would pick out for himself if he went shopping for a wedding band.

“I usually tell my coworkers you’re my ‘partner in crime,’” he says. “But ‘partner in life’ sounds nice, too.”

“Yeah?”

Jean almost laughs at the uncertainty in Nino’s voice. Nino knows him too well to be questioning the veracity of that statement, but he supposes even Nino needs confirmation of Jean’s feelings from time to time.

“Yes,” Jean replies. For added emphasis, he walks around the kitchen counter and over to Nino, slings his free arm behind Nino’s neck while still holding the wrapped bread loaf in the other, and presses a kiss to his lips.

When they separate, Nino looks beyond relieved. “Okay,” he says, sounding almost out of breath. “I believe you.” He takes hold of the bread loaf. “Can I do the honors?”

Jean nods. Nino twists the ring off the plastic wrapping, filling their space with the deliciously sweet smell of strawberry and chocolate combined. He slips the gold band on Jean’s finger. It feels nice and cool against his skin.

“I’m glad we’re still us,” Jean says. Proposing and being proposed to with a gold ring in place of a twist tie on a loaf of strawberry chocolate bread from Mugimaki may be unconventional, but it’s very much _them_.

“Same here,” Nino responds. He looks down at the bread tucked in the crook of his elbow. “I still want a slice of this, by the way.”

“Oh, right.” Jean was about to cut him a piece. “You distracted me.” Speaking of distractions, Jean remembers how their visit to the bakery went earlier today. Nino’s rigid stance, the shopkeeper waving a ruler at Jean and taking his focus away… ”You put the ring on it when we were at Mugimaki. When I wasn’t looking. The shopkeeper was in on it, wasn’t he?”

Nino smirks. “Thinking about it now, I probably didn’t need to involve him. You’re oblivious enough without someone distracting you.”

Jean can’t argue that. “Does Lotta know?”

“Of course. I never would have done this without asking her first.” Nino looks off to the side with a fond smile. “She was thrilled. She wants us to have a ceremony on the rooftop here.”

“She’s probably planning out the decorations as we speak.”

“Yeah.” After a beat of silence, Nino adds, “We don’t have to have a ceremony or anything.”

Jean thinks of his sister, of how much she has always supported them. “Why don’t we let Lotta decide what kind of celebration we have? That’s more her forte than ours.”

“Deal.”

After uncorking a bottle of wine, they sit at the kitchen table and indulge in some slices of strawberry chocolate bread. It’s baked to perfection and is probably the best batch Jean has ever tasted.

He holds up his wineglass. “To partners in crime and partners in life.”

Nino clinks Jean’s glass with his own. “To chocolate and strawberries for the rest of our days.”

A ring may change some things, but it won’t change this. It won’t change _them_ , or the fact that they will always be constants in each other’s lives.

Jean wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> I lost a twist tie that belonged to a loaf of bread, thought about what one could use as a potential replacement, started thinking about bread lovers Jean and Nino, and then this fic was born. (It was also born out of my love for the incredibly talented Natsume Ono who created these great characters.) Thanks for reading!


End file.
